This Channel Catfish Hit like a Monster Walleye!
Posted on August 25th, 2009
I spent all day today looking for good spots to fish tomorrow on the Bay of Quinte with two of the winners that will be joining me from enterying the Insider’s Club Fish with Italo contest. Things started off this morning with nice skies, hot weather and no wind. Well, within an hour of being on the water, the winds picked up, and it started getting cool out. Because of the strong winds, fishing was tough, but we still managed to hook plenty of largemouth bass in the 3-4 lb. range while cranking the Rapala Tail Dancer #9 (hot-chub) color along the many weedlines in Big Bay. Well, about 1 1/2 hrs. into our fishing, a fish slammed a Rapala DT Thug I was casting off of Trident Point so hard, that it drove my rod into the top of the electric motor shaft and made a run around the front of the G3 boat. It was fighting so hard I was sure I had a monster walleye on. Head-shakes, bull-dogging to the bottom, hard short runs, all indicated it was a nice walleye, maybe over 30″ in length. Than, as the fish started to give in, and I was able to lift it close to the surface, I realized I had hooked a trophy channel catfish. This fish fought hard and after about a 10 min. fight we finally netted it. This fish was a good test for the new Rapala Shift spinning rod and Volt spinning reel I have been testing over the last few weeks. In all my years cranking for walleye on both the Upper and Lower Bay of Quinte I have only hooked about 3-channel catfish, but they have all been really big fish!!
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